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VMware and Games?
gunnk asks: "Here's the deal: I really, really, REALLY want to avoid having a Windows partition on my computer, but I have some nifty games that I still want to play (particularly Civ III). I own a copy of VMware, but Civ3 coughs up an error telling me I'm running a debugger and need to unload it when I try to start the game. All this seems to come up due to copy protection in games. Someone asked something like this over at WINE and was told to grab a copy of the exe without the protection via gamecopyworld. That didn't work for me either (didn't run). Anyone finding any reliable ways to run these games without a Windows partition?"
Next time on "Ask Slashdot": I really, really, REALLY want to have my cake and eat it too. Can someone help?
Seriously, for things like this, you often have to make a choice. Sometimes it's a choice between your principles and your desires.
You do have some options for MS-free gaming, most notably Wine and WineX. Or you could limit yourself to games that are available for Linux. TuxGames still has all (most?) of Loki's games available for sale. You could also move to OSX or console gaming.
Or you could decide that your gaming is more important that having an MS-free desktop. And that's okay. What's important is that you decide what's important to you and then follow through on that. If supporting free/open source software is what's important to you, then losing some of your games will be a sacrifice - but, ultimately, it's one that you'll want to make. On the other hand, if gaming is what you want, then just go for it and don't feel guilty about it.
As long as you're not shunning MS just to prove your eliteness...
If you have enough RAM, then non-audio and -video performance are probably just as good as you get running natively. But like you said, the VMWare video drivers *suck*. Whereas I can play a full-screen movie in Linux or native Windows with 5-10% CPU usage, trying the same inside VMWare skips every other frame. The VMWare audio wrapper is even less efficient, taking up most of my 1.4GHz CPU just to play an MP3 and skipping if I try to do anything else concurrently.
For games, VMWare does not support any type of DirectX hardware acceleration at all (do they even support DirectX in any configuration?). So don't even think about trying to play a 3D game. I tried Quake3 once, just to see, and it crashed the VM hard.
WineX will eventually support Civ III. Link here to Civ III shows that it is partially working. I'm guessing the next release will probably fix the font alignment problems; thus moving the rating from 2/5 to 3/5.
As far as cost is concerned, winex is alot cheaper than vmware. You get a small say in how the development is directed along with the use of winex.
--- its to bad about the monkey, I kinda liked them
Games designed to run in windows will always work best in Windows. No matter how much better or more stable Linux is as an OS, something written to work in Windows just won't work as well in Linux with emulation. Not without perfect emulation, which would require much more information on MS Windows and its source (perhaps the 9 states can take care of that). Anyways, at the moment, games written to work in Windows will work better (i.e., faster, more stable ) in Windows. Don't expect to get 100fps in the Windows version of Descent 3 running under Linux; not even if you're using the latest greatest graphics card.
What I suggest you do is set up a minimal Windows partition, with only necessary Windows components installed (i.e., insert Windows install CD, and uncheck everything; even networking -- you can d/l your updates on your Linux partition and move them to the Windows partition). Then install the games on that Windows partition. That's how I have it for my games (Descent 1 - 3, Tombraider 1 - 5, Prince of Persia 1 & 2, Magic Carpet, and Jane's USAF). You'll probably want to twiddle with it a little bit to optimize it for gaming.
This works great for me because I don't plan on buying any new games (unless a new Descent or Tomb Raider comes out), as almost everything new I see on the market really really sucks (the one exception is Sacrafice, which I might at some point buy).
Some of the Linux zealots will tell you if you want to stick to principles, you should dump all Windows games and buy up Linux games. Personally, I think this is bullshit. I paid good money for my games (when I first bought Tomb Raider 4, it costed 30 dollars; Descent 2 was 50 dollars; etc). Asking people to throw away hundreds of dollars worth of investment is ludacrous, and I don't recommend you do it; not only that, but there are no ports for many games (i.e., where's the Linux port for Tombraider?).
Mostly, this isn't the fault of the Linux community but of MS, because they won't allow anyone the necessary information to make good (i.e., 95+% performance) emulators, which would be possible.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I really, really, REALLY want to avoid having a Windows partition on my computer
Why?
It seems like you really, really, REALLY want to run Windows software. And you'll really, really, REALLY have to buy a Windows license anyway, whether you use VMWare or dual-boot.
Is rebooting into the other OS really, really, REALLY such a hassle that you're willing to deal with the poor performance of VMWare?
--saint
It's a playing around machine, I'd like to play with Linux, but I'm not willing to give up Civ III.
License, schmicense... got more of those than machines, who cares?
--Mike--
I can use a scanner in a VM running Windows XP that Linux itself doesn't have a driver for -- how whacked is that? :)
Not that whacked. Try this one:
My company provides me with a VPN client for when I'm on the road. It has two modes; it can act as a modem dialer or it can run over a regular network connection (it uses IPSec in either case). There is no Linux version, only windows.
So, when I want to dial in, I fire up Win2K in VMWare and run the dialer. It talks through a virtual serial port to my Lucent winmodem (for which I have Linux drivers) and dials in. Cool, my VMWare session has connectivity to the corporate network. But I want Linux to have that as well. No problem, I configure Win2K to do "connection sharing" (aka NAT) and configure Linux to use the VMWare "box" as it's default route. If you don't think that's whacked draw a little diagram of the data flow :)
But what about when I'm on a LAN? A little iptables magic and my Linux box acts as a nice little NATing router for the Windows "box" (yes, VMWare can do it's own NAT automatically, but iptables is to that as a swiss army knife is to a letter opener). I fire up the VPN software and then the Windows "box" has an encrypted tunnel to the corporate network, routed through Linux. But I want Linux to have access as well! Okay, here's how: give the Win2K "box" another host-only virtual network adapter, on a different private subnet. Then configure connection sharing on the virtual adapter that's being routed through Linux. Then configure Linux to route outbound connections to the corporate network to the Windows "box" over the "non-shared" connection. Voila!
But many of the LANs I connect to have firewalls that can't deal with IPSec (which is a problem with the firewall software, not, in most cases anyway, a configuration choice by the admin). So, I create an IP over IP tunnel (through some other protocol that will pass the firewall) to my server at home, which routes the tunneled IPSEC packets to my corporate VPN server (and back). It's amusing when I'm at a client site with a team and I'm the only one that can get access to the VPN. I haven't yet had the opportunity, but I expect one of these days I'll end up providing NAT services to teammates' Windows machines to give them access to the VPN. Draw a picture of that and tell me it doesn't curl your toes! The most difficult part is getting permission from the client to do it. They always think that anything that weird must be breaking their security policies in some way.
Although it's not quite as whacked as the networking, I also have a handheld device with an IR interface. Only Windows software exists for it, and that software won't work on Win2K because Microsoft discontinued support for the IRCOMM protocol, and that's all the software will use. Actually, the software really only knows how to use a serial port, but under, for example, Win98 you could create a virtual serial port that actually talked IRCOMM over the IR interface. I don't want to use Win98. So, I configure my IR port to use IRCOMM under Linux and associate it with a serial port (/dev/ttyS1, actuall). Then I configure VMWare to expose /dev/ttyS1 as a serial port under Win2K. The software that talks to the handheld runs just fine under Win2K, as long as it's talking over an ordinary serial port. Well, as far as Win2K knows, it is; Linux handles the translation to IRCOMM.
Linux + VMWare running windows also makes a great USB debugging/reverse engineering tool. Just hack the Linux USB drivers to log all of the messages and then install the windows drivers in a VMWare session and go to town.
There's all kinds of whacked out stuff you can do with VMWare :-)
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I believe the quote has been attributed to Marie Antoinette during the time of the French Revolution. Disregarding the veracity of this common belief, the lower classes were starving, while the rich were using wheat products to make hair products. Think not of baked goods, but of the residue "caked" on the pans.
As the story goes, when confronted with this shortage of food among the poor, Marie supposedly said "Let them eat cake!". Imagine a shortage of dairy products, but all available milk was used to make Elmers glue. Elmer hears us all scream for Ice-cream, and replies "let them eat glue!"
It is not difficult to imagine the corruption of language and history bringing about the phrase in question. Perhaps those freaks who want to consume the lactation of a female bull without regard to the myriad health problems caused by such an unnatural act (including leaching of bone minerals) demand all of the milk Elmer has. He not only relinquished his supply of paste to the revolting fellows, he suggests that they eat it too.
come forth ye moderators. Let he who who is not redundant cast the first Offtopic, making thyself redundant in light of the title.
Your entire first paragraph is garbage. Do you have proof for the first sentence? Assuming "perfect emulation" means complete emulation, you are 0 for 2. The last sentence is misleading as the hardware is not the bottleneck. Windows is NT 4.0 workstation, XP Server and 3.11 for workgroups. If you post a more meaningful comment I'll post a better rebuttal.
Why is your "only necessary Windows" subset any better than a standard Windows install?
I don't know about your zealots, but a consciencious Free Software supporter (e.g. RMS) would suggest you don't buy any new games... almost like you plan not to do... unless they support your morals. As for the software you already own, it is fine to keep them until you can find (write) a free replacement.
Mostly, (the lack of a "Linux" port for Tombraider) isn't the fault of the Linux community or of MS, but of Eidos, because they won't allow anyone the necessary information to make good (i.e., 95+% performance) emulations, which would be possible.
Oh? Eidos shouldn't have to release it's sources? Why should Microsoft? DOS was the platform for games, not Windows. Microsoft developed, promoted, and improved DirectX to the point where it can be considered comparable to OpenGL in many aspects, and the preferred target for most modern games. The Linux community is responsible for a kernel, not an OS, and much less a game. Microsoft is responsible for a Kernel, an OS, and an "industry standard" gaming interface, why should they be responsible for an interactive showcase for monstrous breast renderings?
Sorry, troll, try again.